In the News

Beginning today, June 11, 2018, this page will provide a list of links to news and some social media posts related to forests and forestry in Nova Scotia, the most recent items at the top, as I access them.

Up to this point I have attempted to provide a post on the home page about every news item; all posts are listed under About this site>All Posts. However, I have found that I am missing more and more as at times I can’t keep up with it all, not-to-mention that outdoor Nova Scotia is just too enticing at times.

The dates cited below are the dates of publication of the news items (not the dates on which I accessed them).

NOTE Sep 19, 2018: due to the Chronicle Herald moving their website to a new platform circa Sep 15, 2018, links that refer to articles in the Chronicle Herald before that date are not currently working. Presumably they will fix that issue.
Nov 14, 2018: There is no sign that the CH will fix and make accessible the old links and now the Chronicle Herald further restricts online access to news and opinions (Post, Nov 10, 2018). In general, from this point on I will not cite Chronicle Herald articles when alternative reports are available. Feb 1, 2019: It seems the Chronicle Herald is again making a lot of material freely available so I am again referencing such items. Thx CH. Too quick, I received this explanation a few hrs later: My Q: “I noticed that the CH is again making a lot of material freely available online (since Jan 23 or earlier). Can you confirm a change in policy? Thx. and Thx CH.” Response: No change in policy: we continue to work on improving the online experience and in doing so, our web developers have made e-paper access available from time to time – this will not be permanent.

NOTE Jan 11, 2019: I will be taking a bit of break..so coverage of what’s in the news will be more intermittent for the next 3 months and even after that if the news items appear as frequently as they have been in the last several weeks. ‘Simply to0 much to try to catalogue them all.

Feb 20, 2019:
– The Issue with Tissue: How Americans Are Flushing Forests Down the Toilet
NRDC report by Jennifer Skene & Shelley Vinyard. “…This report provides an overview of the major tissue brands and reveals the worst corporate offenders driving boreal degradation. It describes the impact of virgin pulp sourced from the old growth forests like Canada’s boreal forest and the United States’ strong reliance on tissue products.

Feb 16, 2019:
– By Any Other Name: Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry just made “Clearcuts” disappear
Linda Pannozzo in The Halifax Examiner (subscription required to access full article) “Nova Scotians who signed up to receive proposed harvest plans on Crown land might have noticed some disturbing changes recently. As of a few days ago the maps no longer specify whether a proposed cut is a “clearcut” or not. The word was removed from the legend and the list of harvest prescription types. This…”
– Feedback on Federal Environmental Assessment on The Pipe
“The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) is in receipt of Northern Pulp’s proposal to construct a new effluent treatment facility at its Abercrombie Point location. CEAA is currently reviewing feedback it has received from Pictou Landing First Nation, local stakeholders, and the public in respect of whether it should recommend a federal environmental assessment be conducted regarding this project proposal.
“CEAA will be accepting feedback until February 25, 2019. If you have previously submitted feedback, there is no need to re-submit in order to have your comments considered.
“If you wish to make a submission, please send any comments to:
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
200-1801 Hollis Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 3N4
“Email: CEAA.BoatHarbour.ACEE@canada.ca”
Info courtesy of Sean Fraser, MP

Last fall, I drove through those eastern lands, from south of New Glasgow through to Sherbrooke on the Atlantic shore on Highway 348, over some 70 kilometres. I saw only one patch of big trees — on a slope coming down to water where big machines presumably couldn’t go. The rest had all been clearcut over the past decades.

The “highway” was itself more of a logging road that had been given a thin layer of paving, now all broken up and potholed, presumably during the giveaway Buchanan government era of the 1980s. The only logical reason for paving it would have been to make it easier for the Pictou mill to harvest. Another hidden subsidy. There are more roads like it.

Has government in Nova Scotia evolved at last to the point where it accepts that enough is enough — whether in subsidies, pollution or forest destruction — and can the woods industries accept sustainable forestry? And can the two talk about it? That was my question driving through as the glorious autumn leaves of the St. Mary’s River valley finally gave me relief from the desolation I’d left behind.”

Jan 17, 2019:
–Northern Pulp, Part 1: Successive governments signed away Nova Scotia taxpayers
Aaron Beswick in the News. “What’s next and Who’s left Holding the Bag. “…For his part, McNeil won’t consider extending the deadline unless the Pictou Landing First Nation and other local stakeholders request it…Over the next four days, we will examine what a permanent closure of the Northern Pulp mill would mean for government and taxpayers, Pictou County’s business community, the Northumberland Strait’s ecosystem and the province’s forest industry.”

Jan 6, 2019:
– Weekend video: An interview with Ralph Wheadon, long time Provincial Forest Ranger
Post by By Robert Devet on the NS Advocate. Video by Kent Martin. “KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – This weekend we feature an interview with Ralph Wheadon, who became a Provincial Forest Ranger for the area above St. Margaret’s Bay in the early fifties. He talks about fighting forest fires, log drives down the Ingram River, and the changes (not for the better) he has witnessed over his long career.”

Dec 26, 2018:
– N.S. prepares for worst on controversial pulp mill: ‘No easy solution here’
Keith Doucette / The Canadian Press in The Prince George Citizen “Northern Pulp officials have said that no pipe would mean no mill, and McNeil knows its closure will have a significant impact on the forestry sector province-wide. “There is no easy solution here and we are going to continue to look for options,” McNeil told The Canadian Press in a year end interview.Last week, mill officials won an injunction in Nova Scotia Supreme Court against protesters trying to prevent seismic work in the Strait. The company laid out the impact the mill’s closure would have on the province’s economy in an affidavit submitted in the case. It said closure would mean the layoff of 277 employees, while 40 nursery and woodlands employees with affiliated companies would lose their jobs. Work would also disappear for about 600 employees of contractors who harvest wood for the mill, it said. The document also said the mill supplies about 40 per cent of the logs used by major sawmills in central and eastern Nova Scotia and purchases almost all of the wood chips produced by sawmills in the province. Northern Pulp is also the largest shipper at the Port of Halifax, and pays about $78.3 million for wood chips, hogfuel and pulpwood, while providing $44 million to private woodland contractors.”

Dec 20, 2018:
– The Environment Needs its Own Local and Independent Journalism
by One Not So Bored Housewife. “As I have come to know, there is too great a limit on the ability or the willingness for the local media to tell the stories here in full. And our environment is the most talked about in my circle, but the least covered and most inaccurately reported sector.”

Dec 8, 2018:
– Keep An Open Mind
Ross Tugwell Abercrombie, Letter to the ed, The Advocate/”Northern Pulp is under new ownership, and our new owner has our back, wants to invest in our mill, our future and provide jobs. So now I’m asking my friends and my community to put faith in us as residents of Pictou County, and as workers of Northern Pulp, to allow us to go through the process of meeting government regulations and direction, hold public information meetings, and to go through this process with an open mind.”
– Federation of Nova Scotia Woodland Owners throws support behind Northern Pulp
The News

Dec 5, 2018:
– PICTOU LANDING FILM – BOAT HARBOUR & THE MILL (Youtube video)
By Australian Folksinger Mark Lang
– VIBERT: A thin response on clearcutting
Jim Vibert, Truro News. ” Minister Rankin contended the province could further the ecological objective of Lahey’s report, while “growing the forestry sector.” That comment is a telling insight into the government’s view of the environment. They are all for protecting it, as long as that doesn’t stand in the way of someone making money.”
– Minister of Lands and Forestry outlines clear cutting Policy
CBC Info AM. 14 mins. “The province says it will move towards more ecological forestry. Minister of Lands and Forestry Iain Rankin takes our questions.” Mike Lancaster is interviewed in the beginning about cutting in the Ingram River watershed. Transcript

Dec 1, 2018:
– Closure of pulp mill last rational option
Ralph Surette in the Chronicle Herald (behind a paywall)“Boat Harbour, the notoriously polluted outfall for the pulp mill in Pictou County, is to close in January 2020 — the provincial government having finally given in to 50 years of anguished citizen protest. The alternative, however, is to pipe the effluent miles out into Northumberland Strait…On economics alone, the arguments for the mill were always weak. Its government-given control over the forest starved and killed off local mills. Had it never existed, the jobs it provides would have been created anyway, and a stable local industry would likely be going today with vastly less destruction of the forest — a destruction foreseen by provincial government forestry experts who were dead against this mill when it was built in 1967, but were overruled by the government of Robert Stanfield.
Closing, of course, will be painful — roughly 1,000 jobs, some 300 in the mill, the rest as various woods contractors. However, Sydney has moved on after Sydney Steel, and so has Liverpool since the Mersey mill closed. Also, closing could be costly — possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs and liabilities the province has unwisely signed up for over time to protect the mill, which will also likely sue for losses.
But not facing the music now means facing it later when it’s likely to be far more grating.”

Nov 10, 2018:
–Fishermen not happy with N.S. premier (video)
CTV News
– LETHBRIDGE: Green shift cannot come soon enough
Gail Lethbridge in Chronicle Herald, on the dilemma of dealing with NP/Abercrombie Mill “Our economy and way of life are structured on the burning of fossil fuels and extraction of resources. We can only look the other way for so long. Environmental destruction is the common enemy to people and the economy. There are people out there working on innovations that will help us change the way we live and prosper. I am inspired by these activities and they make me hopeful. The sooner we can face up to the urgent need to change the way we live, the more clarity we will have on how to find a cleaner, greener future.”

Nov 2, 2018:
– Free-for-all in the forest
Stephen Joudrey, Bridgewater, president, South Shore Wildlife Association in Readers Corner (Chronicle Herald) “Wood-harvesting has gone from a very controlled, sustainable industry that respected our ecosystems to massive assaults on our landscape — leaving barren wastelands subject to adverse erosion, silt runoffs and contamination of adjacent watercourses, causing displacement of thousands of birds, reptiles and other wildlife, and resulting in the destruction and loss of fragile flora, old-growth forests and pristine scenic beauty. The pending threat to over one million acres here in Southwest Nova, abetted by the stalled implementation of the Lahey forestry review, and the fact that equipment is already being positioned to proceed with clearcutting on several “approved” plots near Keji Park and beyond, suggests departments such as Lands and Forestry and Environment have lost their purpose.”

Oct 27, 2018:
– We story the land
Documentary Video by Martha Stiegman and Sherry Pictou available on Nova Scotia Advocate “The documentary follows seven paddlers from L’sɨtkuk (Bear River First Nation) as they travel inland following almost forgotten traditional Mi’kmaq canoe routes.” 26 min. Rippling Current Media 2016

Oct 15, 2018:
–Environmental Assessment for Goldboro Gold Project: Focus Report
Announced Oct 15, 2018: “This is to advise, on October 14, 2018, the Environmental Assessment Branch with Nova Scotia Environment released Terms of Reference for the preparation of a Focus Report required for the Goldboro Gold Project environmental assessment.”

Sep 26, 2018:
– Queens County clearcuts create concern
Nicole Munro in the Chronicle Herald
– COUNTERPOINT: Human pest the worst
Sandy Roberton in the Chronicle Herald. “I note, in the wake of your Sept. 25 article on the tree-destroying ash borer beetle, that successive Nova Scotian governments/politicians are in a fierce competition to see who wins the race to destroy our forests. We may, through mechanical or chemical means, find a way to control the borer, but the human element continues its ongoing forest destruction.”

Aug 20, 2018:
– N.S. pays millions for Northern Pulp’s treatment facility design
Aaron Beswick for the Chronicle Herald. “Tucked into the supplementary information of the Public Accounts document is a grant of $6,001,238.13 to Northern Pulp Nova Scotia Corporation from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. It’s for designing the facility that another arm of the provincial government will conduct an environmental assessment on.”

June 27, 2018:– #NOPIPE Land & Sea Rally Set For July 6
Pictou Advocate. “On Friday July 6, Pictou harbour will fill with fishing and pleasure boats and the Pictou waterfront with citizens gathered for the first major Nova Scotia #NOPIPE Land & Sea Rally in support of a healthy Northumberland Strait.”

June 26, 2018:– Municipality of the County of Annapolis: Forestry Report 2018
“The Forestry Advisory Report is a summary of the initial research on forestry and it includes important and timely recommendations for council’s consideration. The committee sees this report as practical and visionary and it points to the need for both short and long-term collaboration between the province, the private sector, industry, and the municipality”.Thx to Bob Bancroft for bringing this item to my attention.